London SEO: How to Grow Your London Business
Grow your brand in the capital with our top London SEO tips for business success!
Being successful with your London SEO strategy can be hard, especially with so many businesses competing against each other. No matter who you are or what you do, every business needs to optimise their online presence to grow and reach their goals. While smaller enterprises may have more work to do in order for their business to succeed, for larger London companies, it’s equally as hard to be found online. But why?
It’s simple - due to the large population and vast number of competitors, achieving success with your London SEO requires a huge amount of work. So, how do you dominate the internet in the bustling capital? We tell you all.
Define your brand values
One of the most valuable assets of a business is its brand, therefore, before you begin trying to improve your online presence, the first thing businesses need to establish is their brand values.
Values sit at the very core of your brand and act as a central point for your business. From your design and logo to your voice and the way you communicate with customers, without values to guide you, your growth and sales will suffer.
So, how do you get started?
When it comes to London SEO, it’s crucial that your values are clear and directly and authentically represent your business. For example, if you sell eco-friendly products and are dedicated to trying to maintain the environment, making sure that this forms the foundation of any marketing campaign is key. Your customers want to know who you are and what they stand for when making purchasing decisions.
Rather than simply choosing standard values such as ‘trusted’ and ‘reliable’ businesses need to consider what makes them truly unique – only then will they be able to build up a three-dimensional brand that stands out.
SEO optimisation
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process of improving your online presence in order to be found for certain keywords, topics or search terms. For businesses looking to be found online, SEO is crucial as, without it, traffic to your site will be slow and your visibility won’t increase.
When it comes to London SEO especially, your customers want to simply search for a keyword, find what they’re looking for and be on their way. Any business owner worth their salt knows that, in order to entice customers, you need to be at the top of Google.
So, how do you get there? Search engine optimisation is an umbrella term for a variety of different techniques and tactics that will help you to increase traffic, improve sales and boost your rankings.
Local SEO
When you’re looking for a local business that’ll supply you with a new key or fix your favourite item of clothing how do you find it? You Google it, of course. Where traditional SEO is all about improving rankings, local SEO focuses on providing results for people based on their location.
Did you know that 78% of local-mobile searches result in offline purchases?
(Statistic courtesy of hubspot)
As more and more people are using mobile phones and voice search to find local businesses, it’s crucial to optimise your online presence for your local areas if you want to attract more customers.
So, how can I use local SEO to grow my London business?
It’s no secret that people rely heavily on reviews when making purchasing decisions online. As a business, getting positive reviews from loyal customers will go a huge way towards cementing your brand as trustworthy and loyal. If you don’t feel comfortable asking specific customers for reviews, why not send out a newsletter or pop a note on your business cards – if people have received a great product or service, they’ll be happy to recommend your business!
- Create local landing pages:
With local SEO, people tend to search for products or services within their immediate area. Business can improve traffic and visibility by creating local landing pages, complete with geographical keywords, for specific locations. For maximum optimisation, making sure your meta titles, descriptions and content is focused towards your desired location will help to drive traffic to your site.
- Optimise your Google My Business listing:
Google My Business, or GMB, is a dashboard that is used for managing listings and helps companies to determine how their brand will look and perform in Google searches. Having a great GMB listing can help to increase your chance of showing up in Googles Local Pack and Local Finder, along with the Map box and organic searches.
When implementing a local SEO strategy, here’s what you should keep in mind:
- Ensure your contact and business information is consistent throughout both your website and your GMB listing.
- Promote yourself locally on social media! SEO is only half of the battle, without a strong social media following, you won’t be reaching your full potential.
- Join local communities to spread your brand name and add your business to local directories for improved visibility. Although these aren’t as popular anymore, it is still worth being listed on these sites.
On Page SEO
When you’re optimising local SEO web pages, it’s important to place an emphasis on the location you’re looking to be found for. This means that the URL, page titles and header tags should all include some variation of your focus location keyword.
Here are some on-page tactics to us to boost your rankings:
- Embedding Google maps on your contact page to increase location relevance
- Using short and memorable URLs that contain your keyword
- Adding relevant images or videos that are keyword optimised
- Using internal and external links which will help Google understand your topic better
On-Site SEO is just as important as off-site SEO when it comes to London SEO, as many large companies will probably already employ an SEO agency to ensure their site is properly optimised. This means that, if you want to beat the competition, you need to act now.
Technical SEO
With competition so high, making sure your website is technically perfect is essential if you want to reach the right customers online. Google will rank sites that have excellent site speed and architecture, so having a website developer on hand to ensure your site is technically optimised will go a huge way towards helping your business to succeed. From crawling your site for errors to creating an optimised XML sitemap, an expert London SEO Agency will be able to make sure your website offers the best possible user experience.
London SEO can be frustrating. It takes time and determination to achieve the results you require. Just don’t expect results straight away - as a small business in a big city you have a long road ahead of you.
Social Media
As we mentioned earlier, Social Media is just as essential as on-site optimisation when it comes to London SEO. Without active social media accounts, you may as well be off the grid. Setting up an account on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn is easy - it’s maintaining it that takes time. When managing your business' social media account, remember:
- Research competitors’ content. When you are trying to thrive in such a large city, picking up on trends and understanding what is working well is essential. Don’t copy their work, better it.
- It’s about quality, not quantity. Spamming your social media for a short amount of time won’t give any benefit to your company. However, regular posts over a long time will build up a following at a steady pace.
- Get everyone involved! Make sure your co-workers are regularly contributing to your social media pages. The more likes, shares and comments on a post the better- even if it’s just colleagues.
Finally, remember that it’s not impossible to grow your London business online. If you have the right tools and knowledge, you’ll see results no matter how small you are. When it comes down to London SEO, patience is vital but results will show eventually, so hang on in there!
This article was produced by London SEO Agency.